Friday, 7 October 2016

The Canyon

She was sitting up in
bed when I entered. Her eyes, holes in her pale face, turned briefly in my
direction.

Her lips moved,
bloodless lines of flesh. “Go away.”

“I’ll go in a minute,”
I said. “I came to see how you were. That’s all.”

“So you’ve seen me.
Now go away.”

I looked at her. One
arm lay on the sheet, looking as thin as a pencil. The other bulked in a thick
white cast, from which steel rods poked out. Something held up the sheet over
her legs as well, angular and looking like a cage.

“I was terrified when
I heard you’d been in the crash,” I said. “I thought you’d die.”

“We didn’t break up,” I couldn’t help repeating something I’d said
before. “You broke up with me. I
didn’t break up with you.”

She silently turned
her head away towards the window. The shadow of a branch moved back and forth
across the frosted glass. I wondered again why a hospital would want to put
frosted glass on its windows, blocking out the sights of the outside that might
cheer a patient up. The second hand on the clock above her head moved all the
way round the dial, and she still looked at the shadow.

“Don’t you have other
visitors?” I asked eventually. I was still standing, and it was getting
awkward. “Your sister – isn’t she here?”

“She came. I told her
to go away. I don’t want to see anyone.”

“I’d have thought a
lot of people would want to see you. You’re quite a heroine in the media.
They’re all talking about your will to survive.”

“I don’t want to. I
want to spend as much time as I can with you, even if it’s in a hospital room
and I hate hospitals. Besides, there’s still an hour of visiting time left.”

She indicated the
chair with a thin finger. She’d lost an amazing amount of weight, which wasn’t
surprising considering what she’d been through. “What do you want to talk
about, then?”

“Us,” I said. “The way
you left me and...”

“Us? There’s no more us. That’s over, whether you admit it to
yourself or not.”

“All right,” I said.
“Tell me what happened. How did you end up...” I indicated her bed and didn’t
finish.

Her thin lips curled
in scorn. “You mean you didn’t get it all from the media?”

“They can’t tell the
truth to save their lives, as we both know. Anyway, all I heard was that you accidentally
drove off the road and crashed into a canyon, and then crawled up all the way
in two days with a broken arm, two broken legs and multiple other injuries. I’d
rather hear it from you.”

“If I’m going to tell
you,” she said then, “I’m going to tell you everything.
I’ll tell you the stuff I haven’t told anyone. And when I do, you’d better not
say I was lying or seeing things.”

“All right,” I said.
“Tell me.”

“And I’ll tell only
you.” There seemed to be some special significance to her words, the way she
said them. “Remember that I’ll tell only you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I
think.”

“Give me some water
from the bottle,” she said. “I’ll need it.”

I did.

*******************************************************

I don’t remember fully how it all started [she said]. I’d been down to my sister’s,
and there was a row. One hell of a row. I don’t recall now what it was about,
mostly because it seems so unimportant now. So utterly pointless. But at the
time I was blind with fury.

I stormed out of her
house, got into my car and drove away so quickly that I almost struck two or
three other vehicles. I couldn’t give a damn. If I’d hit them, I’d have thought
they deserved it. I was that angry.

Then, before I quite
realised it, I was out of town and driving up into the hills, and though I knew
I was going much too fast, I didn’t care. It was already past sunset, and my
headlights were two dull yellow tunnels carving their way through the night. Normally,
I like driving at night, when it’s cool and the stars are out, but this time I
scarcely noticed. And then it began to rain, water rushing down the road,
making my tyres slip and slide.

I remember when the
thought first came to me that I’d be better off dead. The only thing I
remembered of the fight with my sister was her saying I was utterly useless, a
burden to the world. Very well, if I was a burden to the world, there was no
point in continuing to be a burden. That was what I thought. And it wasn’t as
though I had anything to live for, anyway.

I drove on for a
while, my foot pressing harder on the accelerator, until the pedal was almost
down on the floor. I was wrestling the steering wheel, and around each corner I
felt as though I’d run off the road. But I wouldn’t, not yet. I wouldn’t go off
the road until there were canyons to go into.

I still don’t know if
I did it deliberately in the end or whether it was, after all, an accident. I
recall taking one corner a little bit too fast – too fast even for the wild
speed at which I’d been going – and the left front wheel going off the road.
There was a moment’s bumping, and then suddenly I was floating in the air. I
had an instant of euphoria when I knew there was nothing more I could do now,
and then I struck.

I regained
consciousness inside the car, hanging upside down, the seatbelt taut between my
breasts. Something warm was trickling down my face, from my chin over my lips,
to become sticky as it accumulated on my eyes, gathering sticky on my
eyelashes. I thought about it for a while before I realised it was blood.

I’d no idea where I
was or what had happened. For a while I didn’t even know my own name. It was as
though I was a newborn baby, having appeared into the world just then.

I wasn’t in pain. It
was uncomfortable, mostly because my head was pressed against the roof of the
car and the seat belt was chafing me, but I wasn’t in pain. Finally, though, I
decided to do something about it, mostly to get rid of the thing that was so
tight across my chest. Mostly by instinct, I fumbled at the clasp of the seat
belt until it gave, and I fell on the roof of the car. The near side door had
burst open, and I felt rain and earth on my face.

It was then that I
began to remember, and it was then, too, that the pain came. At first it wasn’t
too bad, and as long as I lay in one place it didn’t hurt at all. But as soon
as I tried to move, it began. It was like a wave building far out to sea, and
you could see it racing towards you, but try as you might you couldn’t do a
thing as it reared over you and crashed down and bore you away.

For a long time I just
lay there, while the pain throbbed and flowed over and into me, until I thought
it was all that I would ever feel again. And then it suddenly went away, and so
was the darkness.

I was no longer in the
car. I was lying in bed, in a room with high windows through which I could see
blue skies. Warm sunshine spilled through the nearest window and fell across my
hands. I felt wonderfully content.

In a little while I
realised that I wasn’t alone. Someone was sitting on the bed next to me. At
first I could only see a hand, and a sleeve of dark material. Slowly, I looked
up.

I still can’t describe
the face I saw. I can’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman. All I can
say is that I saw it, and instantly and completely fell in love.

“Well,” the person
said. “Are you feeling better now?”

Until this moment I
couldn’t have imagined I could ever speak again, but the words came easily. “Very
much,” I said, and sat up. “I’m feeling perfectly fine.”

“That’s good.” He, or
she, took my hand. “You’ve been looking for this rest for a long time, haven’t
you? All your life, in fact.”

“Yes,” I said,
suddenly realising that this was just the truth. I got out of bed. The floor
was smooth and cool. “Where are we?”

“In the antechamber,”
the person replied. He or she didn’t explain what antechamber, and I didn’t
ask. There was a door in the wall at the foot of the bed. It was ajar, and
through it I could see sunshine, green grass, and the flicker of a butterfly’s
wings. He, or she, stepped to the door and looked back at me. “Come along.”

“No,” a voice said
behind me. “She is not going anywhere.”

I turned as quickly as
I could. A man was standing behind us, at the head of the bed. “You aren’t
going anywhere,” he repeated.

He was the
cruellest-looking man I ever saw. His face was like a hawk’s, his eyes like two
glittering black stones. And yet there was something extremely familiar about
him – I could swear that I knew him as well as I knew myself. And I was
terribly afraid of him. Just being in the same room almost drove me wild with
terror.

“You will go out of
that door,” he said to me, pointing. And I saw another door, set in the wall
near the head of the bed, and this one gave on to darkness and freezing,
gusting wind.

I tried to take a step
towards the door with the garden and the sunshine, but he strode forward and
was suddenly between me and that door. His eyes, that frightened me so much,
were within centimetres of my face.

I tried to speak, but
my tongue wouldn’t move.

“Out,” he said,
pointing to the door opening on the darkness. And, turning, I rushed out.

The next thing I knew,
I was lying on the ground, outside the car. Rain was crashing down on me, as
hard as the pain that was now rushing through every part of my body. I clutched
at the earth, trying to burrow into it, to bury the pain in it, and never move
again.

All I heard was the
same voice. Without even opening my eyes, or turning my head, I knew he was
there. “Keep going.”

I began to crawl. I
barely know, even now, how I did it. Every few minutes, I had to stop to rest,
and I lay there hoping I could be back in that bed, in that room, and this time
I could go through the door with the sunshine. But each time I’d hear that
voice again. “Move. Keep moving.” And I would, because I was so terrified of it
that I couldn’t bear to lie there a moment longer.

At some point during
the crawl, night turned to day, and I could see a little where I was going. By this
time I was pulling myself up the slope, and it was fortunate that I could see.
The rain was still falling, and I licked it off my arms and the leaves of
plants that brushed my face. But I couldn’t stop to rest. As I grew more
exhausted and the pain more severe, his voice became more insistent. And then,
out of the corner of my eye, I could see him, too, standing on the slop looking
down at me with his cruel, cruel eyes.

“Keep moving,” he
ordered. “Go on.”

And I went on.

All through that day,
and the night, I crawled, beyond the point of pain and exhaustion, beyond the
point where I could even feel my body. I was like a machine, fuelled by fear,
controlled by his voice. And morning came again, and I found I was lying on the
road.

I don’t remember much
after that until I woke up here, in this hospital.

*******************************************************

“Even
now, I want to be back in that bed. Each time the sleeping medicines they give
me wear off and I wake up, I’m bitterly disappointed I’m not there.” She took
another sip of water and looked at me. “I’ve told you,” she said. “Now please
leave, and never let me see you again.”

I got up. It was
almost the end of visiting hours anyway. “I won’t come anymore if you don’t
want me to,” I said.

“That’s not what I
meant,” she said. “Don’t let me ever see you again. No matter what happens.
Ever.”

Obviously, she wanted to go to the garden, but someone or something forced her to crawl to the road where she was taken to hospital. Was it really her ex, or did she just see it as her ex? Great ambiguity.

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